When cigarettes serve as a light in the dark
SIR – Camilla Coats-carr (Letters, June 14) is right that smoking can provide much-needed relief.
My brother, as a prisoner of war in North Korea, was given a tobacco ration by the Chinese. Paper, for rolling purposes, became a valuable commodity since the Chinese did not issue any. My brother thought of that tobacco issue as a life-saver.
The following is a verse taken from Surviving the Sword, a book about POWS in Japanese hands during the Second World War. The poem is called “The Fifth Horseman” and was written in the Philippines by Charles Brown, an American POW.
To the wounded went his magic
leaves,
And the dying blessed his name. Hunger vanished in his golden
dust,
And it will always be the same. Where the beast lets loose his fury, And his four horsemen rage the
land,
This fifth one, called Tobacco,
rides
To soothe the stricken man.
I have been a non-smoker for more than 50 years but I would not deny “a spit and a draw” to a stricken man. Keith Kenworthy
Mansfield, Nottinghamshire